What is OhioLINK's Elsevier open access agreement?
Starting in January 2024 and continuing through the end of 2027, authors at participating OhioLINK member institutions now have the ability to publish open access (OA) journal articles in most of Elsevier’s hybrid journals at no additional cost to either the author or the institution. Some journals are excluded from open access publishing benefits, such as Cell Press and Lancet journals. The agreement with Elsevier applies only to articles published in selected hybrid journals. "Hybrid" means that the journal publishes articles that are available both by subscription and through open access. Fully open access journal titles accept only articles that will be published as open access, and are not included under this agreement. Search for participating journals using the Elsevier's journal finder tool for the OhioLINK agreement.
OhioLINK's agreement with Elsevier gives member institutions and their authors the open access option without paying any additional fees. Open access publication often also includes licensing the work to allow for reuse, such as the use of Creative Commons licenses. See more information about licenses on Elsevier's website.
NOTE: This open access publishing benefit is subject to availability. With this agreement, there is a maximum number of articles that may be published open access annually across all OhioLINK institutions. Once the limit is reached, the option to publish articles open access at no cost under the agreement will no longer be available. Authors may then choose to publish behind the paywall or to fund the APC for open access on their own.
To be eligible to publish open access at no cost in a Elsevier journal under this deal, the corresponding author of the article (see below for definition) must be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center (EJC), a full text searchable database of electronic journal articles from top scholarly publishers.
The corresponding author is the author who submits the article to Elsevier and stays in contact with Elsevier in the end-to-end publishing process. The corresponding author is responsible for making publishing choices on behalf of the author group. Every article has one corresponding author, which must be affiliated with an OhioLINK institution that participates in the Electronic Journal Center (EJC). Elsevier asks authors to identify their institution affiliation as part of the publishing process. Use of an institutional email address is encouraged to ensure the corresponding author’s eligibility can be accurately determined.
Access to the publishing benefits begins January 1, 2024 and continues through December 31, 2027. To publish an article as open access in an Elsevier journal without paying any Article Publication Charge (APC), the article must be accepted for publication during this period and APC coverage must be available under the agreement. As mentioned above, there is a maximum number of articles across all OhioLINK institutions that may be published as open access. If the limit is reached, authors will no longer see the option to publish as open access at no charge.
Full-length articles, micro-articles, review articles, case reports, data in brief, original software publications, practice guidelines, protocols, replication studies, short communication, short survey, and video articles are eligible for open access publishing in any of the eligible hybrid journals under this agreement. Find a participating journal in this agreement by title or subject area.
When a corresponding author's article has been approved for publication in an eligible Elsevier journal, they are offered the option to publish their article as open access. In order to be offered the option of publishing open access at no charge, the annual cap limit must not have been reached. See the Agreement between OhioLINK and Elsevier.
There is an annual limit to the number of articles to be published as open access under this agreement across all of OhioLINK member institutions, based on historical publishing trends. Should the article limit be reached, authors will no longer see the option to publish their article as open access under this deal. Authors could then choose to publish open access by paying the APC or they also could choose to publish their article as a traditional subscription-access only article at no cost to them. See Elsevier's APC price list for more information.
Elsevier offers resources for authors interested in publishing articles open access:
OhioLINK has also created resources for this and its other open access agreements: